The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-12-10
Editorial 8riefs.
By REV. I. M. ATWOOD, D. D.
Canton. N. Y.

The EXTENT to which our society-we
had almost said our best society-is in
fected with the malaria toady ism, is
every now and the revealed in way that
suggests the melodrama. The reportgis
started that some fellow = usually un-
known and Worthless is. of 'noble line
age" In a very ehort time he becomes
the lion of society. He is sought after,
dined, feted and overwhelmed with sud-
den and bewildering atte1 ton. There
are not secular evenings enough in the
week to admit of all the fools in the
neighborhood showing him proper honor.
II he has any wit at all, be usually turns
the[unexpected situs ton to account, bor-
rows money, NJ makes debts and disappears
from the scene, leaving his adorers to re-
cover at their leisure from the shock.
One consoling circumstance is the
education the ninnies have got. They
are some wiser than before; and since
their enlightenment can be procured only
at much cost, perhaps the chsgrin is not
too great price. They now write in Sc
we're censure of the "impostor," and ap-
peal to the law for satisfaction. But he
is only fool of different species from
his victims. Their lack of principle and
their shallownees was the deep pit into
which he fell. It was better for them to
lay the blame, at least equally, on them
selves, and accuse their own weakness as
much as they denounce his duplicity.
From Darwin's Life and Letters
we learn many interesting facts concern
ing the privsle life and the mental history
OF this great student of nature. We obtain.
also, instructive glimpees of the way in
which his scientific theories reacted on
his religious views. For example, he
tells us that previous to the adoption of
the theory of natural selection he had
studied Paley's celebrated argument from
design and had considered 1t "conclu-
sive." The discovery of "the law of natur-
al selection" ss he names it, destroyed
the force of this argument to his mind
entirely. His confession of the failure of
that argument to have any further weight
with him is followed by this decisive
statement: "There seems to be no more
design in the variability of organic beings,
and in the action OF natural selection
than in the course which the wind
blows"
This view produced marked effect
on bis whole conception OF religion. HsIie
belief in personal God presently took
fight along with other earlier convictions.
He wrote in his journal on occasion of
being impressed with the grandeur of the
Brazilian forest, an expression, ardent
for man of his temperament, of the
sense of Divine Being with which it
filed him, and coupled with it naturally,
his conviction of human Immortality.
But in referring to that expression some
years afterward, and when his scientific
theories had been espoused, he remarks:
"Now the grandest scenes would not cause
any such convictions or feelings to rise
In my mind"
Darwin is type of Darwinians. We
have had our eye and mind open to this
subject for twenty years. We had no
partisarship, certainly, for the larger
part Of this period, to blind us to the
facts open to an observer. We do not
record it as an opinion; we assert it as a
fact, that the usual effect of the adoption
Of Darwin's biological theories has been
a more or less rapid slide into Darwin's
skepticism as to God and Immortality.
We are not here saying that this is
again st Darwinism; we are here recording
a most instructive fact.
One would infer from Robert Louis
Stevenson's account Of the way in which
he learned to write, that in his opinion a
writer may be made by persistent prac.
tice after several good models. There is
some truth in this view and some error.
The truth in it is the emphasis placed on
the value of practice in composition. The
readiness with which man OF good abil-
tiles and fair information may acquire the
art OF putting things, is illustrated in the
amplest manner by the journalists of
the day. Few of them had shown much
talent for Journalism when they began.
But daily practice, under the stimulus of
public expectation and the tutorship of a
great number OF trained masters, giving
them object lessons every morning, ad-
vanced them rapidly, and now they turn
a sentence or finish period with notice
able skill.
1t Is fallacy, however, to imagine
chat any amount of practice, under what
ever masters, will make a great writer.
Great writer's in all departments are
born not made. 1t does not appear that
Henry Fielding, for example, went through
any such routine as Mr.. Stevenson de.
scribes. There was from the very first
in his style, as in Oliver Goldsmith
quality which training is powerless to
produce. By industry, man may make
Of himself great scholar, like Porsou, or
a great authority in some special depart
ment of literature, like Grote; but a
great writer, never. Nor need we confine
the scope of the remark to writer's who
are, strictly speaking, great. 1t may be
said with safety of any writer who has
command of style of a peculiar grace
power or suggestiveness, that he brough,
with him into the world, the UNIQUE germ.